Technical advances and increasing ubiquity of mobile phones have paved the way for new advances in the treatment and management of chronic illnesses. Researchers and clinicians have identified several areas in which mobile phones could transform care for the chronic illness patient, including improved adherence, better data about what patients do and how they feel between visits, and feedback and tools to assist the patient in the management of their illness. However, presently available systems to date utilizing mobile phones are either non-scalable academic endeavors or unproven commercial applications, and do not adequately support the endeavors of healthcare providers.
In the current world of chronic illness management, patients typically are seen on a monthly to every-three-month clinical visit schedule. At the time of the visit, patients are typically surveyed about their symptoms and overall functional status over the time interval between visits. This is prone to errors of oversimplification and poor subjective recall. For example, patient recall of pain, affect, and satisfaction is notoriously poor. A patient may report that their pain over the last month was significant and that they were generally not very happy, but collected data may paint a very different picture.
Presently there are no suitable options for providing the patient and clinician/healthcare professional a more accurate view of how a patient is functioning in the presence of chronic illness. For example, chronic pain is ideally managed in a multi-modal fashion. In addition to prescribing analgesics, clinicians typically prescribe non-pharmacologic interventions like diet, exercise, physical therapy, etc. There is, however, no currently available means for providing support for all-encompassing health management services to help patients and clinicians manage all these related treatments.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure made herein is presented.